Hey all,
Here is a belated message from Alexa Odom (current president) that I caught wind of when I ran into her in the union yesterday.
I wanted to inform you, if you haven't already heard, that our dear Tom McGinnis is leaving Ohio State at the end of this quarter. Thankfully, unlike Joe Paterno and Jim Tressel, it's under good terms. He received a job offer from the University of Minnesota to serve as their Chief Financial Office for their department of Athletics and also will work very closely with the men's and women's hockey teams.Seeing as he wants to eventually become an athletic director, he said this is a great move for him in his career and Ohio State wasn't going to be offering him this type of opportunity anytime soon. Unfortunately this means he'll be leaving Staters at the end of the quarter. However, his last official luncheon will be next week, November 17th, and as a gift we're compiling letters to give to him in a scrapbook. I wanted to extend the invitation to all of you to submit a letter to me and we can include it in our scrapbook for him. You by no means have to, but I thought you may be interested.
If you want to writ e aletter, could you please email me by Sunday? I know you're all busy but the sooner we can get them the better because Exec is trying to compile things on Sunday. BUT if you need more time then if you could have them to me at the latest by Wednesday (11/16) that would work too. But of course, you can always email him yourself if you want!
And since I'm on here anyway, here's my life-update:
I'm in the throws of my third year of medical school- which started in July. This is when we see patients all the time, and it's essentially me paying Ohio State to let me have a full-time job. So far I have done one month of trauma surgery, one month of transplant surgery, a month of pediatric endocrinology (diabetes), a month of pediatric hematology/oncology (cancer and blood disorders), and I am now in Internal Medicine, or general adult medicine. I have done two weeks of infectious diseases and now I am in the Ross on cardiology. Next month I go to Riverside for general medicine. This winter I do neurology, psychiatry, two months of ob/gyn (delivering babies!), a month of outpatient family medicine and then a month hopefully in the Emergency Room. I have until August to decide what kind of doctor I want to be, as next Sept I have to apply for residency. So, in about a year and half I will be Dr. Conroy and will head off to a 3-5 year residency depending on what I go into. Right now I'm thinking that I will either be an emergency room doctor, a pediatrician, or an adult internist. Or, I could find ways to combine two of the three in various different ways.
Overall, third year is unequivocally the most stress I have ever had. Working as much as 85 or 90 hours a week sometimes, plus studying and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity and a life is pretty hard. To add to it, I am the president of the student government for our six professional schools, IPC. I distinctly remember making fun of IPC in undergrad for being the only organization to manage to do less than USG, but alas now I am among them. I've really enjoyed getting to see a completely different world in Ohio STate and get to be in the early end of conversations that I felt like we heard about long down the road in terms of University policy and changes at large. It's a good networking opportunity, and I'm learning a lot about politics with all of it-- useful skills if I stay in a University medical center for my career. I describe my life as mostly in shambles most of the time; and while staters and pre-med in undergrad did prepare me to be busy, this is just another level for me.
Other updates, last year I took up marathon-running and ran the full marathons in both Columbus and Cleveland. I became pretty addicted and was in amazing shape, but 80 hour weeks in surgery this summer put a very quick halt to my training and I don't have any races on my calendar this year. I do plan on running the columbus marathon in 2012, assuming I can continue to ward off major injury among the many miles of training.
No major life-milestones for me otherwise. I'm still in the same house in victorian village that I have been in since after college graduation. But, I'm finally getting an itch to leave Columbus. Maybe I'll head to the east coast again or chicago or new york for residency. Still trying to figure out where I want to go next.
I don't have much time off of work these days, and have to work most weekends, but if you're in Columbus visiting let me know!
There are some important events coming up, and I'm always looking for an excuse to see you all.
